A BALANCE OF TRADE IN EDUCATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 8

A BALANCE OF TRADE IN EDUCATION

"TRE present educational inequality between nations represents a danger to the peace of the world, which cannot become ONE if half of it is illiterate, . . . The world owes a duty to its less favoured peoples, not only in their interests, but in its own." These words from a statement by Archibald MacLeish, chairman of the drafting committee of the programme commission of Unesco, illustrate not only one of the major aims of Unesco-to improve the educational standards of under-developed countries — but also the field in which Unesco’s most successful work has been done since its ifiception. It was to find out what practical achievements had been made in this field that "The Listener" interviewed the Director of Education, Dr. C. E. Beeby, who returned to New Zealand the other day after an absence of 18 months as Unesco’s assist- : ant Director-General,

HAT, first of all, were Unesco’s basic objectives in education? Dr. Beeby thought it should aim at achieving a certain minimum level of world education, and that it should also promote the desire among nations to use education for the improvement of interNational understanding. This did not mean that the Western nations should try to impose their educational ideas on other countries and reduce everything to one dead level-it would be better for Unesco to shut up shop completely than to attempt that. They had to recognise the values of other cultures and remember that our own particular brand of rather materialist progress was not necessarily the standard to which everything else should be attuned. "Unesco should be regarded as an educational exchange market," he said. "And it should aim at achieving a balnce of trade in education throughout the world."

The most pressing need was obviously an attack on illiteracy, and to this end Dr. Beeby said that following his own suggestion a regional training and production centre was to be established in Latin America. He thought a chain of such centres should be established throughout the world as funds became available, starting with South America, the Middle East, India, China, and the Pacific. Such a chain of centres would probably do more than anything else, in his opinion, to rid the world of illiteracy. EDUCATIONAL MISSIONS OME of Unesco’s most practical achievements last year were accomplished by its educational missions, Dr. Beeby said. Action was taken only if a request was received from the country concerned, and last year there had been three missions-one to the Philippines, one to Siam, and one to Afghanistan. Although the Philippines mission had included two Americans that to Siam had consisted of one Englishman and one Filipino, he said which was a practical*example of how an East-West balance was always aimed at.

The mission to Afghanistan demonstrated the international complications Unesco could encounter, — "There you have a country, very largely illiterate, with no university system, and three languages spoken.- Pushtu, Persian, and Turki. To complicate matters even further, students who are sent abroad for higher education go to France, Germany, or England, according to the career they want to follow. Thus there are not only three languages to contend with, there is also a

people who have been trained according to three educational systems. The mission had to find a solution suitable to all. Half of the cost was paid by Unesco, and half by Afghanistan. The members were chosen by Unesco, each from a country that had made special advances

in a particular branch of education. Thus there was a Frenchman to study their secondary education, an Englishman for their technical education, and an American for elementary education." The mission’s report would be submitted to the Afghanistan Government, Dr. Beeby said, which was free to reject any part or all. But since it had gone to considerable expense to get the mission in the first place, that wasn’t likely. The mission’s work would be. supplemented by a stream of clearing-house material from Unesco headquarters, and fellowships would also be made available to Afghanistan students to study abroad, he added. "Of course we still don’t know whether this is the best way to attack a particular country’s problems," Dr, Beeby said. "We still don’t know all the answers, but we are progressing. Next year there will be sufficient funds for three more missions-probably to Pakistan, which is holding its first democratic election next year with complete adult franchise, and wants to know how to do it; to Burma, which has a very formal academic type of education (not suited to modern conditions) that the Burmese want overhauled; and to the Argentine whose people want to develop their technical education system." ar THE WORLD'S NEEDS [| JNDER-DEVELOPED countries were not the only ones which could benefit from Unesco, Dr. Beeby continued, and much valuable information about educational needs in different parts of the world was being accumulated. "We are building up from this a strategic map of the world indicating which countries have made the most advances in the different branches of education, where experts in any particular field can be obtained, and so on," he said. New Zealand, he had realised from what he had seen of other systems, was one of those countries which had more to give than to receive in education, Our

treatment of the Maori people, for instance, in the native schools system, and our rural education system, with its methods of conveyance, consolidation and bursaries, and the work of the correspondence school also were of great interest to other nations. So was our new secondary school curriculum, with its "core subjects." On the other hand, Britain had made new discoveries in the matter of school feeding which could benefit us, Scandinavia had something to offer the world in its folk high schools, and America in its school buildings and the education of children of low intelligence. France, by contrast, was well in advance in its treatment of children of very high intelligence. Even China could teach us something-in its "Co-ops," of which Rewi Alley’s Bailie Training School at Shantan was a fine example, and in its mass education system. CLEARING HOUSE WE asked Dr. Beeby about Unesco’s function as a clearing house for educational iinformation. How did _ this work? Through the Clearing House a great mass of printed information about the latest developments in education was sent out to member countries, he said. An example was the quarterly Bulletin of Fundamental Education, distributed in English, French and Spanish, and soon to be available in Chinese and Arabic also. Its purpose was to draw attention to experiments and projects in fundamenta: education which seemed to offer fresh lines of attack on old problems. Recent Bulletins had contained articles on a village reconstruction experiment in Egypt, the card system of teaching in China and mass literacy campaigns in Northern Rhodesia and Bombay, with examples of literacy primers that could be used by adults. SEMINARS { N the seminar or "workshop" method of conducting an international conference, Dr. Beeby continued, Unesco felt they had developed one of the most useful instruments for the spread of ideas and international understanding. "The seminar is a new idea in some countries," he said. "For instance, a South American conference I attended was completely taken up with addresses and the reading of papers. That is their idea of the form a conference should take. So starting international seminars presented difficulties. There was the difficulty of adopting a new idea, there were differences and misunderstandings due to varying national customs, and there was the language difficulty. Every small discussion group of two or three people had to have’ its own interpreter. Let me give you an example. We had a seminar in Rio on/ampaigns against illiteracy. Now in South America the population is at least 50 per cent illiterate, and some of the campaigns conducted against -illiteracy by national states are archaic in technique. In Rio, 69 people from Brazil, Unesco, and the Pan-American Union worked for five months collecting data on work already done, assembled statistics, and searched other countries for the best work that had been done along particular lines. The national campaigns were then based on these findings. "There were arguments of course. National delegates tended to support the

methods of their own countries, even if they were archaic. But the seminar is a democratic method of working. It isn’t Unesco’s job to tell people what to do. We put the facts before them, we tell them of the results of the best work done in other countries, and after thorough discussion we find that the best and most up-to-date method is usually adopted. "I’m sure that many of the mistakes we have made in developing community centres in New Zealand could have been : avoided if we had at the start conducted | : an international seminar with people from the Scandinavian Folk High | Schools, from Cambridge and from France where work of this nature was then in a more advanced stage of development. "We were encouraged to find that seminars spawn," Dr. Beeby continued. "We found that after an international | discussion delegates would go home and start smaller seminars to thrash out their | specific problems. We hope to see this multiplication continue after the two seminars we will hold in 1950-one in Canada on the teaching of geography, | and the other in Belgium on the im-_ provement of textbooks." STUMBLING BLOCKS HAT stumbling blocks had Unesco encountered in its work? "Our main difficulty has been a sheer lack of trained staff," Dr. Beeby said. "There just aren’t the right men available, and if we do find a man we want, it is hard to persuade his government to release him from the important work he is almost bound to be doing in his own country. For a year and a-half I’ve been looking for a man to head the technical assistance project. There is no doubt at all in my mind that five hundred or a thousand men, well trained and adapted to the job, would make a big difference to the work that not only Unesco, but the whole United Nations is doing. "Another unavoidable stumbling block is national tradition. Take the writing of history. The purely national approach leads to conclusions which are often far from the truth, but it is impossible, and in my opinion not the duty of Unesco, to try and write a universal history. However, Unesco is working on a handbook for history teachers; this will be submitted to an international seminar, torn to shreds by the experts, and then rewritten. We also have a group working on the teaching of human rights from an ‘international point of view. The Englishman usually thinks of the development of human rights in terms of Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the Reform Bills; but Frenchmen have another line of approach, and the West in general would do well to know, for instance, that an early Chinese emperor had a complete system of state grants to different churches long before this fight was established in Europe." NATIONAL PREJUDICE HAT does Unesco do when it finds itself up against national prejudices? "We have to devise methods which will get results without offending. We

must aim at a balance of exchange of ideas, otherwise we might develop a sort of international colonialism with the flow entirely from West to East. In material techniques the East has much to learn, but the West cannot afford to be condescending. We should gain much in our knowledge of human values if we invited a professor of Oriental philosophy, say from India, and an authority on Chinese art, to spend a year in New Zealand. "You might gather from this that it is a fundamental principle in the work of Unesco to recognise the importance of local values, to encourage diversity rather than try and impose uniform standards. And even more fundamentally, in spite of the many definitions of the phrase, Unesco seems committed to work in the democratic system. "In carrying out these two principles we have found that it is often possible to get nations to agree on a course of action without necessarily agreeing on the reasons for taking this course. We can’t hope yet to agree on fundamental educational aims, but with reasonable support, Unesco can do something to direct education consciously towards the improvement of international understanding, and it can aim at a certain minimum level of world education. We feel we have sufficient agreement and support on this basis for 20 years’ work. "Lastly, I feel that it is in itself an advance and a completely new development to find nations willing to lay down cold cash for Unesco when this money will return no visible short term national benefita," .